Now the wait. Naturally, I “need” the version with 3G, otherwise what’s the point of a mobile device? That won’t be available for around 90 days. But in the meantime, I am downloading the SDK with iPad emulator from the Apple Developer site, and who knows? Maybe I’ll even get around to developing something for it someday? In my copious spare time, of course.

But in spite of all these factors, I’ve still bought one. Why?

The fact is, I’m impatient. I’ve long seen the benefits of digital media. Indeed, I’ve even published books electronically myself. A decade ago, I owned a PalmOS device (a Handspring) on which I read a number of ebooks as well as kept track of appointments, played games, and so on. That device finally failed, and I didn’t replace it, so all the content I’d bought for it, while still in my computer’s archive folder, is essentially lost. Still, I did enjoy the handheld experience, and know I’ll use any ebook reader I finally acquire. There’s the practical issue of portability, too. My husband and I live in our motorhome nearly half the year, and there is just not enough room to carry all the books I’d like to have available in there.

But what about that iPhone I’ve written about so often? I’ve even written about the Kindle for iPhone app on this blog and I use it still. But as much as I love my iPhone, it is the case that my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be (which never was that great), and these days I simply cannot read for long or as well on even as good a screen as the iPhone’s simply because of its small size. I find that although I have read entire books on it, I don’t retain as much sense from them as I want to. Also, the iPhone app doesn’t let me highlight blocks of text to refer to later. Yes, I can create bookmarks, but that’s not quite the same. Since I have bought some of my textbooks for grad school as ebooks, these are critical shortcomings.

In short, the Kindle for iPhone app is a stopgap. I had hoped Apple would announce a tablet computer or ebook reader this summer, and if they had I would have held off a while longer, but they haven’t. Oh, if they do eventually come out with a new gadget, especially if they make a deal with Amazon to allow Kindle-formatted ebooks to work on it, I will cheerfully throw my Kindle up on eBay and jump on the killer iBook. But until that day, Amazon is getting my somewhat grudging allegiance and money.

Before I get too far into this subject, I need to post a bias alert: My husband and I live and travel in our largish RV (38-feet long) eight or nine months of the year. This lifestyle is the root of one possible interpretation of the title for this blog, “New Media on the Go”. We use new media quite literally “on the go”.

So, to get back to The Rally, one of the main attractions of this event is its tradeshow aspect. There are hundreds of vendors represented here, indoors and out. One of the first booths I stopped to see belongs to a company called Protonex. Their product is something that uses technology I didn’t know was available commercially yet, but which most of us have heard about: fuel cells. The device they are showing at The Rally is a 12-volt, 20-amp generator that runs on methanol. About the size of a microwave oven, it is much smaller than the conventional gas-operated generator that came with our RV, and it is much quieter. The unit in their booth includes a cooling fan, which may have been creating most of the sound it emits. I had to step close to it to hear it at all. There was no obnoxious smell, no noticable exhaust fumes. In fact, they were running it indoors, so it must not have dangerous emissions (or they have an exhaust vent that wasn’t apparent from the front of the booth).

According to their website, “Methanol is an alcohol and is typically produced from natural gas. It has a long, stable shelf life and produces ultra low emissions when used in Protonex systems.” The site says their devices will run on other fuels as well, but this is the one they foresee using in the RV market. More about that in a future article.

I have to admit I’m pretty ignorant about fuel cells, but I plan to research this hitherto blue-sky green tech (blue-green tech?) and report my findings in this blog. Mike McCarthy, Protonex VP for Commercial Business Development, promised me an interview, and along with some independent fact-finding I hope to reduce my own ignorance, and possibly bring you a new datum or two as well. Stay tuned.